فصل 33

33

MARK

Mark was zipping up his suitcase when the detective arrived. A different detective this time, another woman, a bit older and not so pretty.

“DS Erin Morgan,” she said, shaking his hand. “I was wondering if I could have a word.”

He didn’t invite her in. The house was a mess and he wasn’t in the mood to be accommodating.

“I’m packing to go on holiday,” he said. “I’m driving to Edinburgh this evening to pick up my fiancée. We’re going to Spain for a few days.”

“It won’t take long,” DS Morgan said, her gaze slipping over his shoulder and into the house.

He pulled the front door closed. They spoke on the front step.

He assumed it would be about Nel Abbott again. He was, after all, one of the last people to see her alive. He’d seen her outside the pub, they’d spoken briefly, he’d watched her head off towards the Mill House. He was prepared for that conversation. He wasn’t prepared for this one.

“I know you’ve already been over this, but there are a few things we need to clarify,” the woman said, “about events leading up to the death of Katie Whittaker.”

Mark felt his pulse quicken. “What, er . . . what about it?”

“I understand that you had cause to intervene in an argument between Lena Abbott and Katie, about a month before Katie died?”

Mark’s throat felt very dry. He struggled to swallow. “It wasn’t an argument,” he said. He held up his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. “Why . . . sorry, why is this coming up again? Katie’s death was ruled a suicide, I thought—”

“Yes,” the detective interrupted, “yes, it was, and that hasn’t changed. However, we’ve come to understand that there might have been, er, circumstances surrounding Katie’s death which we didn’t know about before and which may require further investigation.”

Mark turned abruptly, pushing the front door open so hard it rebounded on to him as he stepped into the hallway. The vise was tightening on his skull, his heart was pounding, he had to get out of the sun.

“Mr. Henderson? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” His eyes adjusting to the darkness of the hallway, he turned back once more to look at her. “Fine. A bit of a headache, that’s all. The glare, it’s just—”

“Why don’t we get you a glass of water?” DS Morgan suggested with a smile.

“No,” he replied, realizing even as he spoke how sullen he sounded. “No, I’m fine.”

There was a silence. “The argument, Mr. Henderson? Between Lena and Katie?”

Mark shook his head. “It wasn’t an argument . . . I told the police this at the time. I didn’t have to separate them. Not . . . at least, not in the way that was suggested. Katie and Lena were very close, they could be excitable and voluble, the way many girls of that age—children of that age—can be.”

The detective, still standing in the sunshine on the front step, was now a faceless outline, a shadow. He preferred her that way.

“Some of Katie’s teachers reported that she seemed distracted, perhaps a bit more reserved than usual, in the weeks running up to her death. Is that your recollection?”

“No,” Mark said. He blinked slowly. “No. I don’t believe so. I don’t believe that she had changed. I didn’t notice anything different. I didn’t see it coming. We—none of us—saw this coming.”

His voice was low and strained and the detective noticed. “I’m sorry to bring all this up again,” she said. “I understand how terrible—”

“I don’t imagine that you do, actually. I saw that girl every day. She was young and bright and . . . She was one of my best students. We were all very . . . fond of her.” He stumbled over fond.

“I’m very sorry, I really am. But the thing is that some new facts have come to light, and we have to look into them.”

Mark nodded, struggling to hear her over the pounding of blood in his ears; his entire body felt very cold, as though someone had poured petrol all over him.

“Mr. Henderson, we have been led to understand that Katie may have been taking a drug, something called Rimato. Have you heard of it?”

Mark peered at her. Now he did want to see her eyes, he wanted to read her expression. “No . . . I . . . I thought they said that she hadn’t taken anything? That was what the police said at the time. Rimato? What is that? Is that . . . recreational?”

Morgan shook her head. “It’s a diet pill,” she said.

“Katie wasn’t overweight,” he said, realizing how stupid that sounded even as he said it. “They talk about it all the time, though, don’t they? Teenage girls. About their weight. And not just teenagers, either. Grown women, too. My fiancée never shuts up about it.”

True, though not the whole truth. Because his fiancée was no longer his fiancée, she no longer moaned to him about her weight, nor was she waiting for him to pick her up to accompany him to M?laga. In her last email, sent some months ago now, she’d wished misery on him, told him she’d never forgive him for the way he’d treated her.

But what had he done that was so terrible? If he’d been a truly awful man, a cold, cruel, unfeeling man, he’d have strung her along for appearances’ sake. It would have been in his interests, after all. But he wasn’t a bad man. It was just that when he loved, he loved completely—and what on earth was wrong with that?

• • •

AFTER THE DETECTIVE LEFT, he walked around the house, opening drawers, thumbing through the pages of books, looking. Looking for something he knew very well he wouldn’t find. The night after Midsummer, angry and frightened, he’d built a fire in the back garden and had piled onto it cards and letters, a book. Other gifts. If he looked out of the back window now, he could still see it, a little patch of scorched earth where he had eradicated every trace of her.

As he pulled open the desk drawer in his living room, he knew exactly what he’d see, because this wasn’t the first time he’d done it. He’d searched and searched for something he’d missed, sometimes in fear and often in grief. But he’d been thorough that first night.

There were pictures, he knew, in the head’s office at school. A file. Closed now, but still kept. He had a key to the admin block and he knew exactly where to look. And he wanted something, he needed something to take with him. This wasn’t a triviality, it was essential, he felt, because the future was suddenly so uncertain. He had an inkling that when he turned the key in the back door, locking up the house, he might never do that again. Perhaps he wouldn’t come back. Perhaps it was time to disappear, to start over.

He drove to the school, parking in the empty car park. Sometimes Helen Townsend worked there during the school holidays, but there was no sign of her car today. He was alone. He let himself into the building and headed up past the staff room to Helen’s office. Her door was closed, but when he tried the handle, he found it unlocked.

He pushed the door open, breathing in the nasty chemical whiff of carpet cleaner. He crossed the room to the filing cabinet and pulled open the top drawer. It had been emptied, and the drawer below was locked. He realized with an acute sense of disappointment that someone had rearranged everything, that in fact he didn’t know exactly where to look, that perhaps this had been a wasted journey. He darted out to the hallway to check that he was still alone—he was, his red Vauxhall still the only vehicle in the car park—and went back to the head’s office. Taking care not to disturb anything, he opened Helen’s desk drawers one by one, looking for the keys to the filing cabinet. He didn’t find them, but he did find something else: a trinket he couldn’t imagine Helen wearing. Something that struck him as vaguely familiar. A silver bracelet with an onyx clasp, and an engraving reading SJA.

He sat and stared at it for a long time. He couldn’t for the life of him think what it meant, the fact that it was here. It meant nothing. It couldn’t mean anything. Mark replaced the bracelet in the desk, abandoned his search and returned to his car. He had the key in the ignition when it struck him exactly when he’d seen that bracelet last. He’d seen it on Nel, outside the pub. They’d spoken briefly. He’d watched her head off towards the Mill House. But before that, before she had left him, she had been fidgeting with something on her wrist as they spoke, and there, it was there. He retraced his steps, went back to Helen’s office and opened the drawer, took the bracelet and put it into his pocket. He knew as he was doing it that if someone asked him why, he wouldn’t be able to explain himself.

It was, he thought, as though he were in deep water, as though he were reaching for something, anything, to save himself. It was as though he had reached for a life buoy and instead found weeds, and grabbed hold of them anyway.